Unbreakable Disease
2019-12-14 18:13:00 UTC
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Old Testament "Prophecies" of Jesus Proven False I
Tune in your television to any of the Bible preaching stations clogging
the air waves. You're bound to encounter, not only as Bono of U-2 so
succinctly puts it, "A preacher on the Old Time Gospel Hour stealing
money from the sick and the old", but invariably you will hear these
high-tech thieves "proving" Jesus is the Son of God, and thus the one to
tithe for, by reading "prophecies" from the Old Testament allegedly
foretelling of Jesus. Many sincere kind people are duped by this type of
fortune telling.
The truths Tom Paine reveals in the following essay concerning the
prophecies, if given a large enough popular audience, will cripple the
religious right and their money machine. His essay removes a fundamental
plank key to the continuation of the Christian myth. The editor.
EXAMINATION OF THE
PROPHECIES
by Thomas Paine
The passages called prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ, in the
Old Testament may be classed under the two following heads.
First, those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, called
the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, those which translators and commentators have, of their own
imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that title at the
head of the several chapters of the Old Testament. Of these it is
scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon; I shall,
therefore, confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid
four books of the New Testament. If I show that these are not prophecies
of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such
person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators
or the Church have invented, and for which they had no other authority
than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
In i. 18, it is said, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:
When His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together,
SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD OF THE HOLY GHOST."
This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree with
the next it should have said no more than that she was found with child;
for the next verse says, "Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and
not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away
privately." Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was
with child, and he knew it was not by himself.
Verses 20, 21. "And while he thought of these things, [that is whether
he should put her away privately, or make a public example of her],
behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM [that is, Joseph
dreamed that an angel appeared unto him] saying, Joseph, thou son of
David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son,
and call his name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins."
Now, without entering into any discussion upon the merits or demerits of
the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has no higher
authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible to a man to behold
anything in a dream but that which he dreams of. I ask not, therefore,
whether Joseph if there was such a man had such a dream or not, because
admitting he had, it proves nothing. So wonderful and irrational is the
faculty of the mind in dream, that it acts the part of all the
characters its imagination creates, and what it thinks it hears from any
of them is no other than what the roving rapidity of its own imagination
invents. It is therefore nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether
of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife. I pay no regard to my own
dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.
The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the writer
of the book of Matthew. "Now [says he] all this [that is, all this
dreaming and this pregnancy] was done that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be
with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us."
This passage is in Isaiah vii, 14, and the writer of the book of Matthew
endeavors to make his readers believe that this passage is a prophecy of
the person called Jesus Christ. It is no such thing, and I go to show it
is not. But it is first necessary that I explain the occasion of these
words being spoken by Isaiah. The reader will then easily perceive that
so far from their being a prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the
least reference to such a person, nor to anything that could happen in
the time that Christ is said to have lived, which was about seven
hundred years after the time of Isaiah. The case is this:
On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monarchies: one
called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem: the
other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was Samaria. The
kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, and the kingdom of Israel
that of Saul; and these two rival monarchies frequently carried on
fierce wars against each other.
At this time Ahaz was King of Judah, which was in the time of Isaiah,
Pekah was King of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to Rezin, King of
Syria, to make war against Ahaz, King of Judah; and these two kings
marched a confederated and powerful army against Jerusalem. Ahaz and his
people became alarmed at their danger, and "their hearts were moved as
the trees of the wood are moved with the wind." Isaiah vii, 3.
In this perilous situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz,
and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets), that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to
assure him that this should be the case (the case was however directly
contrary) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord.
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason, that he would not tempt
the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who pretends to be sent from God, says,
verse 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son - butter and honey shall he eat,
that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good - for before the
child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land which
thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" - meaning the King
of Israel and the King of Syria who were marching against him.
Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and that
child a son; and here also is the time limited for the accomplishment of
the sign, namely, before the child should know to refuse the evil and
choose the good.
The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must be something
that would take place before the event of the battle then pending
between him and the two kings could be known. A thing to be a sign must
precede the thing signified. The sign of rain must be before the rain.
It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to have
assured Ahaz a sign that these two things should not prevail against
him, that a child should be born seven hundred years after he was dead,
and that before the child so born should know to refuse the evil and
choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be delivered from the danger he was
then immediately threatened with.
But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his own
child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant; for he
says in the next chapter (Is. vii, 2), "And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah; and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bear
a son;" and he says, at verse 18 of the same chapter, "Behold I and the
children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in
Israel."
It may not be improper here to observe, that the word translated a
virgin in Isaiah, doe not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely a young
woman. The tense is also falsified in the translation. Levi gives the
Hebrew text of Isaiah vii, 14, and the translation in English with it -
"Behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son." The expression,
says he, is in the present tense.
This translation agrees with the other circumstances related of the
birth of this child which was to be a sign to Ahaz. But as the true
translation could not have been imposed upon the world as a prophecy of
a child to be born seven hundred years afterwards, the Christian
translators have falsified the original: and instead of making Isaiah to
say, behold a young woman IS with child and beareth a son, they have
made him to say, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son."
It is, however, only necessary for a person to read Isaiah vii, and
viii, and he will be convinced that the passage in question is no
prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. I pass on to the second
passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of Jesus
Christ.
Matthew ii, 1-6. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the
days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the East to
Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we
have seen his star in the East and are come to worship him. When Herod
the king heard these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him;
and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said
unto him, In Bethlehem, in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by
the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least
among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a Governor that
shall rule my people Israel." This passage is in Micah v, 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day
time, as a man would a will-with-the-wisp, or a candle and lantern at
night; and also that of seeing it in the East, when themselves came from
the East; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a
guide, it must be in the West to them. I confine myself solely to the
passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, v, 2, is speaking of
some person, without mentioning his name, from whom some great
achievements were expected; but the description he gives of this person,
verse 5, 6, proves evidently that is not Jesus Christ, for he says, "and
this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land:
and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise up against
him [that is against the Assyrian] seven shepherds and eight principal men.
"And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land
of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall he [the person spoken of
at the head of the second verse] deliver us from the Assyrian, when he
cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders."
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot be
applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to give
us of him. Besides which, the circumstances of the times here spoken of,
and those of the times in which Christ is said to have lived, are in
contradiction to each other.
It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians that had conquered and were in
the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, and
when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was they who
signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ, I pass on to
the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a
prophecy of him. This, like the first I have spoken of, is introduced by
a dream. Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth
another angel.
The account begins at Matthew ii, 13. "The angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother
and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: For
Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him.
"When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and
departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
Out of Egypt have I called my son."
This passage is in the book of Hosea, xi, 1. The words are, "When Israel
was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt. As they
called them so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim and
burned incense to graven images."
This passage, falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the
children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharaoh, and to
the idolatry they committed afterwards. To make it apply to Jesus
Christ, he then must be the person who sacrificed unto Baalim and burned
incense to graven images; for the person called out of Egypt by the
collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idolatry, are
the same persons or the descendants of them.
This then can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are willing to
make an idolater of him. I pass on to the fourth passage called a
prophecy by the writer of the book of Matthew.
This is introduced by a story told by nobody but himself, and scarcely
believed by anybody, of the slaughter of all the children under two
years old, by the command of Herod. A thing which it is not probable
should be done by Herod, as he only held an office under the Roman
Government, to which appeals could always be had, as we see in the case
of Paul. Matthew, however, having made or told his story, says, ii, 17,
18, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,
saying - In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping and
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted because they were not."
This passage is in Jeremiah xxxi, 15; and this verse, when separated
from the verses before and after it, and which explain its application,
might with equal propriety be applied to every case of wars, sieges, and
other violences, such as the Christians themselves have often done to
the Jews, where mothers have lamented the loss of their children.
There is nothing in the verse, taken singly, that designates or points
out any particular application of it, otherwise than it points to some
circumstances which, at the time of writing it, had already happened,
and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the preter or past
tense. I go to explain the case and show the application of the verse.
Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, took,
plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem, and led the Jews captive to Babylon.
He carried his violence against the Jews to every extreme. He slew the
sons of King Zedekiah before his face, he then put out the eyes of
Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.
It is this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is
speaking. Their Temple was destroyed, their land desolated, their nation
and government entirely broken up, and themselves, men, women and
children, carried into captivity. They had too many sorrows of their
own, immediately before their eyes, to permit them, or any of their
chiefs, to be employing themselves on things that might, or might not,
happen in the world seven hundred years afterwards.
It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering to the
Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question. In the next two
verses (16, 17), he endeavors to console the sufferers by giving them
hopes, and, according to the fashion of speaking in those days,
assurances from the Lord, that their sufferings should have an end, and
that their children should return again to their own children. But I
leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Testament to
testify against the New.
Jeremiah xxxi, 15. "Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah [it
is in the preter tense], lamentation and bitter weeping: Rachel, weeping
for her children, refused to be comforted for her children because they
were not." Verse 16, "Thus saith the Lord: Refrain thy voice from
weeping and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith
the Lord; and THEY shall come again from the land of the enemy." Verse
17. - "And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children
shall come again to their own border."
By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children of
which Jeremiah speaks (meaning the people of the Jewish nation,
scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two
years old), and who were to return again from the land of the enemy, and
come again into their own borders, can mean the children that Matthew
makes Herod to slaughter? Could those return again from the land of the
enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to them? Could they
come again to their own borders?
Good heavens! How the world has been imposed upon by testament-makers,
priestcraft, and pretended prophecies. I pass on to the fifth passage
called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, like two of the former, is introduced by dream. Joseph dreamed
another dream, and dreameth of another angel. And Matthew is again the
historian of the dream and the dreamer. If it were asked how Matthew
could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the Bishop nor all the Church
could answer the question.
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed, and not Joseph; that is, Joseph
dreamed by proxy, in Matthew's brain, as they tell us Daniel dreamed for
Nebuchadnezzar. But be this as it may, I go on with my subject.
The account of this dream is in Matthew ii, 19-23. "But when Herod was
dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in
Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother and go
into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young
child's life. And he arose and took the young child and his mother, and
came into the land of Israel."
"But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his
father Herod, he was afraid to go tither. Notwithstanding being warned
of God in a dream [here is another dream] he turned aside into the parts
of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called
a Nazarene."
Here is good circumstantial evidence that Matthew dreamed, for there is
no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the Bishop, and
all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce
it. I pass on to the sixth passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and
shoulders; it need only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced and
farfetched piece of imposition.
Matthew, iv, 12-16, "Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into
prison, he departed into Galilee: and leaving Nazareth, he came and
dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of
Zebulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulon and the land of
Nephtalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them
which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is springing upon them."
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the
Christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy.
He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and
undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed them
with that title. The words however, are in Isaiah ix, 1, 2 as follows:
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when
at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of
the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened at the
time these words in Isaiah were written. The one, where the land of
Zebulon and Naphtali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more
grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He begins his
quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as a comma,
and thereby cuts off everything that relates to the first affliction. He
then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this
means leaves out everything that makes the verse intelligible, and
reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the
eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between brackets []
the words he has left out, and put in italics those that he has preserved.
"[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when
at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of
the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this
manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a
credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Verse 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light;
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the
light shined." All this is historical, and not in the least prophetical.
The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had been
accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be
accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to
be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to falsify the
original but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of no concern
to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which
the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and what the light was that had
shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, Isaiah viii, of which ix is only
a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at verse nineteen of
"witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and of people who made
application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this
darksome practice.
It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, or walking in
darkness, that he is speaking at ix, 2; and with respect to the light
that had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry,
and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches
and wizards who peeped about and muttered.
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild, disorderly writer, preserving in
general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas,
and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them.
It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the
ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities
to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose
those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ.
Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them,
and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning,
they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called
it his. I have however in this place done Isaiah the justice to rescue
him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces,
and from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by
letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in any
case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would better
apply to the times we now live in than to any other. The world has
"walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and
government, and it is only since the American Revolution began that
light has broken in.
The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book
or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counterfeit or
falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Matthew has
shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making
its way among us: and as to government, the light is already gone forth,
and while men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it,
as at a certain time in France when everything was Robespierrean
violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the
perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew viii, 16, 17. "When the evening was come, they brought unto him
[Jesus] many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the
spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying,
himself took our infirmities, and bare our sickness."
This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting them
out, was the fable of the day when the books of the New Testament were
written. It had not existence at any other time. The books of the Old
Testament mention no such thing; the people of the present day know of
no such thing; nor does the history of any people or country speak of
such a thing. It starts upon us all at once in the book of Matthew, and
is altogether an invention of the New Testament makers and the Christian
Church.
The book of Matthew is the first book where the word devil is mentioned.
We read in some of the books of the Old Testament of things called
familiar spirits, the supposed companion of people called witches and
wizards. It was no other than the trick of pretended conjurers to obtain
money from credulous and ignorant people, or the fabricated charge of
superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decrepit old age. But
the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the term, is
exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil.
In the one case, the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent, that
comes and goes and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a turbulent
roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions.
Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the
reason He endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.
The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in
Isaiah, liii, 4, which is as follows: "Surely he [the person of whom
Isaiah is speaking] hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." It
is in the preter tense.
Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sicknesses. The
passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, is not even
applicable as a circumstance.
Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs
the whole of this chapter, liii, in lamenting the sufferings of some
deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically. It is a monody on
the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor
gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and
it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid
hold of, to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews,
whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with
danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of
their own friends, but were continually running a wild-goose chase into
futurity.
To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The characters and
circumstances of men, even in the different ages of the world, are so
much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many;
but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but
an imposter, or a bigot, would call it so.
Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions
nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the
cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience
in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line
of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be
said of many.
But if Jesus Christ was the person the Church represents him to be, that
which would exclusively apply to him must be something that could not
apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature,
something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such
expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.
It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the
person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter, He was oppressed and he was
afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not
his mouth. This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered
oppressions and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect
resignation.
Grotius, whom the Bishop [of Llandaff] esteems a most learned man, and
who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is
speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion from the
agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah and the case
of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was hard; he was
accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned,
and he says of himself, (see Jer. xi. 19) "But as for me I was like a
lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter."
I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived
at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks;
but Isaiah died about fifty years before; and it is of a person of his
own time whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in question, and
which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards,
perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xii, 14-21: "Then the Pharisees went out and held a council
against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it he
withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him and he healed them all;
and he charged them they should not make him known; That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying,
Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is
well pleased; I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment
to the Gentiles. "He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man
hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and
smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto
victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust."
In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the
purpose for which it is quoted.
Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to destroy
him - that Jesus withdrew himself - that great numbers followed him -
that he healed them - and that he charged them they should not make him
known. But the passage Matthew has quoted as being fulfilled by these
circumstances does not so much as apply to any one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to destroy
Jesus - with his withdrawing himself - with great numbers following him
- with his healing them - nor with his charging them not to make him known.
The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage itself, are
as remote from each other, as nothing from something. But the case is,
that people have been so long in the habit of reading the books called
the Bible and Testament with their eyes shut, and their senses locked
up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth,
and imposition for prophecy.
The Allwise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of
fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.
In this passage, as in that last mentioned, the name of the person of
whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark
respecting him. It is this defect in the history that bigotry and
imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.
Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would descriptively
apply to him. As King of Persia, his authority was great among the
Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks; and his
friendship for the Jews, whom he liberated from captivity, and who might
then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive.
But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no
authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figuratively
described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him. Neither
can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice was not
heard in the street. As a preacher it was his business to be heard, and
we are told that he traveled about the country for that purpose.
Matthew has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is good, but
which is much to be doubted since he imposes so much) Jesus preached to
a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a
mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as public.
The last verse in the passage (the fourth) as it stands in Isaiah, and
which Matthew has not quoted, says, "He shall not fail nor be
discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall
wait for his law." This also applies to Cyrus. He was not discouraged,
he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and
established laws.
But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who in the passage before us,
according to Matthew, [xii, 15], withdrew himself for fear of the
Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make it known
where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was
continually moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended.
But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who the
person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of detecting
fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to show it was not the
person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxi. 1-5. "And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come
to Bethpage, unto the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two of his
disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and
straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them
and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought to you, ye shall say,
the Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send them. All this
was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,
saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold thy King cometh unto thee,
meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."
Poor ass! let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings, that if
the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the Christian
world has elevated thee into a prophecy.
This passage is in Zechariah ix, 9, and is one of the whims of friend
Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then returning from
captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusalem. It has no
concern with any other subject. It is strange that apostles, priests,
and commentators, never permit, or never suppose, the Jews to be
speaking of their own affairs.
Everything in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings
never intended by the writers. Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass
but a Christian-ass. I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a
bishop, or at least make him speak and prophesy. He could have lifted up
his voice as loud as any of them.
Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several
whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem. He says at the eighth
verse, "I saw by night [Zechariah was a sharpsighted seer] and behold a
man setting on a red horse [yes reader, a red horse], and he stood among
the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were red
horses, speckled and white." He says nothing about green horses, nor
blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from
blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there,
because "faith is the evidence of things not seen."
Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not
tell us what color the angel was of, whether black or white, nor whether
he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for
certainly they were of that kind. Be this however as it may, he enters
into conversation with this angel on the joyful affair of getting back
to Jerusalem, and he saith at the sixteenth verse, "Therefore, thus
saith the Lord, I AM RETURNED to Jerusalem with mercies; my house shall
be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched
forth upon Jerusalem." An expression signifying the rebuilding the city.
All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that it
was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and not the
entry of Jesus Christ seven hundred years afterwards, that is the
subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.
As to the expression of riding upon an ass, which commentators represent
as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he never was so well
mounted before. The asses of those countries are large and well
proportioned, and were anciently the chief of riding animals. Their
beasts of burden, and which served also for the conveyance of the poor,
were camels and dromedaries. We read in Judges x, 4, that Jair [one of
the Judges of Israel] "had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts,
and they had thirty cities." But commentators distort everything.
There is besides very reasonable grounds to conclude that this story of
Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is said at
verses eight and nine, by a great multitude, shouting and rejoicing and
spreading their garments by the way, is a story altogether destitute of
truth.
In the last passage called a prophecy that I examined, Jesus is
represented as withdrawing, that is, running away, and concealing
himself for fear of being apprehended, and charging the people that were
with him not to make him known. No new circumstance had arisen in the
interim to change his condition for the better; yet here he is
represented as making his public entry into the same city from which he
had fled for safety. The two cases contradict each other so much, that
if both are not false, one of them at least can scarcely be true.
For my own part, I do not believe there is one word of historical truth
in the whole book. I look upon it at best to be a romance; the principal
personage of which is an imaginary or allegorical character founded upon
some tale, and in which the moral is in many parts good, and the
narrative part very badly and blunderingly written.
I pass on to the tenth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvi, 51-56: "And behold one of them which was with Jesus
[meaning Peter] stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a
servant of the high priest, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto
him, put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the
sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray
to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of
angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?
"In that same hour Jesus said to the multitudes, Are ye come out as
against a thief, with swords and with staves for to take me? I sat daily
with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this
was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."
This loose and general manner of speaking, admits neither of detection
nor of proof. Here is no quotation given, nor the name of any Bible
author mentioned, to which reference can be had.
There are, however, some high improbabilities against the truth of the
account.
First - It is not possible that the Jews, who were then a conquered
people, and under subjection to the Romans, should be permitted to wear
swords.
Secondly - If Peter had attacked the servant of the high priest and cut
off his ear, he would have been immediately taken up by the guard that
took up his master and sent to prison with him.
Thirdly - What sort of disciples and preaching apostles must those of
Christ have been that wore swords?
Fourthly - This scene is represented to have taken place the same
evening of what is called the Lord's supper, which makes, according to
the ceremony of it, the inconsistency of wearing swords the greater.
I pass on to the eleventh passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 3-10: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw
that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty
pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned
in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that
to us, see thou to that. And he cast down the thirty pieces of silver,
and departed, and went and hanged himself.
"And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, it is not lawful
to put them in the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they
took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers
in. Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day.
"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet,
saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that
was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them
for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me."
This is a most barefaced piece of imposition. The passage in Jeremiah
which speaks of the purchase of a field, has no more to do with the case
to which Matthew applies it, than it has to do with the purchase of
lands in America. I will recite the whole passage:
Jeremiah xxxii, 6-15: "And Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came unto
me, saying, Behold Hanameel, the son of Shallum thine uncle, shall come
unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth, for the right
of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanameel mine uncle's son came to
me in the court of the prison, according to the word of the Lord, and
said unto me, Buy my field I pray thee that is in Anathoth, which is in
the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is thine, and the
redemption is thine; buy it for thyself.
"Then I knew this was the word of the Lord. And I bought the field of
Hanameel mine uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the
money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence
and sealed it, and took witnesses and weighed him the money in the balances.
"So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed
according to the law and custom, and that which was open; and I gave the
evidence of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah, the son of
Maaseiah, in the sight of Hanameel mine uncle's son, and in the presence
of the witnesses that subscribed [the book of the purchase], before all
the Jews that sat in the court of the prison.
"And I charged Baruch before them, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel: Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase,
both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open, and put them in
an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. For thus saith the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall
be possessed again in this land."
I forebear making any remark on this abominable imposition of Matthew.
The thing glaringly speaks for itself. It is priests and commentators
that I rather ought to censure, for having preached falsehood so long,
and kept people in darkness with respect to those impositions.
I am not contending with these men upon points of doctrine, for I know
that sophistry has always a city of refuge. I am speaking of facts; for
wherever the thing called a fact is a falsehood, the faith founded upon
it is delusion, and the doctrine raised upon it not true. Ah, reader,
put thy trust in thy Creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou
trustest to the book called the Scriptures thou trustest to the rotten
staff of fable and falsehood. But I return to my subject.
There is among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention made of
thirty pieces of silver given to a potter. They can hardly have been so
stupid as to mistake a potter for a field: and if they had, the passage
in Zechariah has no more to do with Jesus, Judas, and the field to bury
strangers in, than that already quoted. I will recite the passage.
Zechariah xi, 7-14: "And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O
poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called
Beauty, the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. Three shepherds
also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul
also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you; that which dieth,
let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let
the rest eat everyone the flesh of another.
"And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might
break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was
broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock who waited upon me knew
that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them, If ye think
good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my
price thirty pieces of silver.
"And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter; a goodly price that
I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and
cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Then I cut asunder
mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between
Judah and Israel."
There is no making either head or tail of this incoherent gibberish. His
two staves, one called Beauty and the other Bands, is so much like a
fairy tale, that I doubt if it had any other origin. There is, however,
no part that has the least relation to the case stated in Matthew; on
the contrary, it is the reverse of it. Here the thirty pieces of silver,
whatever it was for, is called a goodly price, it was as much as the
thing was worth, and according to the language of the day, was approved
of by the Lord, and the money given to the potter in the house of the Lord.
In the case of Jesus and Judas, as stated in Matthew, the thirty pieces
of silver were the price of blood; the transaction was condemned by the
Lord, and the money when refunded was refused admittance into the
treasury. Everything in the two cases is the reverse of each other.
Besides this, a very different and direct contrary account to that of
Matthew, is given of the affair of Judas, in the book called the "Acts
of the Apostles"; according to that book the case is, that so far from
Judas repenting and returning the money, and the high priests buying a
field with it to bury strangers in, Judas kept the money and bought a
field with it for himself; and instead of hanging himself as Matthew
says, that he fell headlong and burst asunder. Some commentators
endeavor to get over one part of the contradiction by ridiculously
supposing that Judas hanged himself first and the rope broke.
Acts i, 16-18: "Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been
fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before
concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus [David says
not a word about Judas], for he [Judas] was numbered among us and
obtained part of our ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the
reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst
and his bowels gushed out."
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed
religion, when we see in it such
contradictions and absurdities? I pass on to the twelfth passage called
a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 35: "And they crucified him, and parted his garments,
casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did
they cast lots." This expression is in Psalm xxii, 18.
The writer of that Psalm (whoever he was, for the Psalms are a
collection and not the work of one man) is speaking of himself and his
own case, and not that of another. He begins this Psalm with the words
which the New Testament writers ascribed to Jesus Christ: "My God, my
God, why hast Thou forsaken me" - words which might be uttered by a
complaining man without any great impropriety, but very improperly from
the mouth of a reputed God.
The picture which the writer draws of his own situation in this Psalm,
is gloomy enough. He is not prophesying, but complaining of his own hard
case. He represents himself as surrounded by enemies and beset by
persecutions of every kind; and by the way of showing the inveteracy of
his persecutors he says, "They parted my garments among them, and cast
lots upon my vesture."
The expression is in the present tense; and is the same as to say, they
pursue me even to the clothes upon my back, and dispute how they shall
divide them. Besides, the word vesture does not always mean clothing of
any kind, but Property, or rather the admitting a man to, or investing
him with property; and as it is used in this Psalm distinct from the
word garment, it appears to be used in this sense. But Jesus had no
property; for they make him say of himself, "The foxes have holes and
the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to
lay his head."
But be this as it may, if we permit ourselves to suppose the Almighty
would condescend to tell, by what is called the spirit of prophecy, what
could come to pass in some future age of the world, it is an injury to
our own faculties, and to our ideas of His greatness, to imagine that it
would be about an old coat, or an old pair of breeches, or about
anything which the common accidents of life, or the quarrels which
attend it, exhibit every day.
That which is in the power of man to do, or in his will not to do, is
not subject for prophecy, even if there were such a thing, because it
cannot carry with it any evidence of divine power, or divine interposition.
The ways of God are not the ways of men. That which an Almighty power
performs, or wills, is not within the circle of human power to do, or to
control. But an executioner and his assistants might quarrel about
dividing the garments of a sufferer, or divide them without quarrelling,
and by that means fulfil the thing called a prophecy, or set it aside.
In the passages before examined, I have exposed the falsehood of them.
In this I exhibit its degrading meanness, as an insult to the Creator
and an injury to human reason.
Here end the passages called prophecies by Matthew.
Matthew concludes his book by saying, that when Christ expired on the
cross, the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the bodies of many of the
saints arose; and Mark says, there was darkness over the land from the
sixth hour until the ninth.
They produce no prophecy for this; but had these things been facts, they
would have been a proper subject for prophecy, because none but an
Almighty power could have inspired a foreknowledge of them, and
afterwards fulfilled them. Since then there is no such prophecy, but a
pretended prophecy of an old coat, the proper deduction is, there were
no such things, and that the book of Matthew was fable and falsehood.
I pass on to the book called the Gospel according to St. Mark.
THE BOOK OF MARK
There are but few passages in Mark called prophecies; and but few in
Luke and John. Such as there are I shall examine, and also such other
passages as interfere with those cited by Matthew.
Mark begins his book by a passage which he puts in the shape of a
prophecy. Mark i, 1,2. - "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God: As it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee."
(Malachi iii,1)
The passage in the original is in the first person. Mark makes this
passage to be a prophecy of John the Baptist, said by the Church to be a
forerunner of Jesus Christ. But if we attend to the verses that follow
this expression, as it stands in Malachi, and to the first and fifth
verses of the next chapter, we shall see that this application of it is
erroneous and false.
Malachi having said, at the first verse, "Behold I will send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me," says, at the second
verse, "But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand
when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap."
This description can have no reference to the birth of Jesus Christ, and
consequently none to John the Baptists. It is a scene of fear and terror
that is here described, and the birth of Christ is always spoken of as a
time of joy and glad tidings.
Malachi, continuing to speak on the same subject, explains in the next
chapter what the scene is of which he speaks in the verses above quoted,
and whom the person is whom he calls the messenger.
"Behold," says he, (iv, 1), "the day cometh that shall burn like an
oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be
stubble; and the day cometh that shall burn them up, saith the Lord of
hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Verse 5:
"Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the
great and dreadful day of the Lord." By what right, or by what
imposition or ignorance Mark has made Elijah into John the Baptist, and
Malachi's description of the day of judgment into the birthday of
Christ, I leave to the Bishop [of Llandaff] to settle.
Mark (i,2,3), confounds two passages together, taken from different
books of the Old Testament. The second verse, "Behold I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee," is
taken, as I have said before, from Malachi. The third verse, which says,
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the
Lord, make His paths straight," is not in Malachi, but in Isaiah, xl, 3.
Whiston says that both these verses were originally in Isaiah. If so, it
is another instance of the distorted state of the Bible, and
corroborates what I have said with respect to the name and description
of Cyrus being in the book of Isaiah, to which it cannot chronologically
belong.
The words in Isaiah - "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" - are in the
present tense, and consequently not predictive. It is one of those
rhetorical figures which the Old Testament authors frequently used. That
it is merely rhetorical and metaphorical, may be seen at the sixth
verse: "And the voice said, cry; and he said what shall I cry? All flesh
is grass."
This is evidently nothing but a figure; for flesh is not grass otherwise
than as a figure or metaphor, where one thing is put for another.
Besides which, the whole passage is too general and too declamatory to
be applied exclusively to any particular person or purpose.
I pass on to the eleventh chapter.
In this chapter, Mark speaks of Christ riding into Jerusalem upon a
colt, but he does not make it an
accomplishment of a prophecy, as Matthew has done, for he says nothing
about a prophecy. Instead of which he goes on the other tack, and in
order to add new honors to the ass, he makes it to be a miracle; for he
says, verse 2, it was a colt "whereon never man sat"; signifying
thereby, that as the ass had not been broken, he consequently was
inspired into good manners, for we do not hear that he kicked Jesus
Christ off. There is not a word about his kicking in all the four
Evangelists.
I pass on from these feats of horsemanship performed upon a jack-ass, to
the 15th chapter. At the 24th verse of this chapter, Mark speaks of
parting Christ's garments and casting lots upon them, but he applies no
prophecy to it as Matthew does. He rather speaks of it as a thing then
in practice with executioners, as it is at this day.
At the 28th verse of the same chapter, Mark speaks of Christ being
crucified between two thieves; that, says he, the Scripture might be
fulfilled, "which saith, and he was numbered with the transgressors."
The same might be said of the thieves.
This expression is in Isaiah liii, 12. Grotius applies it to Jeremiah.
But the case has happened so often in the world, where innocent men have
been numbered with transgressors, and is still continually happening,
that it is absurdity to call it a prophecy of any particular person. All
those whom the church calls martyrs were numbered with transgressors.
All the honest patriots who fell upon the scaffold in France, in the
time of Robespierre, were numbered with transgressors; and if himself
had not fallen, the same case according to a note in his own
handwriting, had befallen me; yet I suppose the Bishop [of Llandaff]
will not allow that Isaiah was prophesying of Thomas Paine.
These are all the passages in Mark which have any reference to
prophecies. Mark concludes his book by making Jesus to say to his
disciples (xvi, 16-18), "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but
he that believeth not, shall be damned [fine popish stuff this], and
these signs shall follow them that believe: in my name they shall cast
out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them;
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
Now, the Bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and
wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself. He should
take a good dose of arsenic, and if he please, I will send him a
rattlesnake from America.
As for myself, as I believe in God and not at all in Jesus Christ, nor
in the books called the Scriptures, the experiment does not concern me.
I pass on to the book of Luke.
A second part is available on World Wide Web here:
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Old Testament "Prophecies" of Jesus Proven False I
Tune in your television to any of the Bible preaching stations clogging
the air waves. You're bound to encounter, not only as Bono of U-2 so
succinctly puts it, "A preacher on the Old Time Gospel Hour stealing
money from the sick and the old", but invariably you will hear these
high-tech thieves "proving" Jesus is the Son of God, and thus the one to
tithe for, by reading "prophecies" from the Old Testament allegedly
foretelling of Jesus. Many sincere kind people are duped by this type of
fortune telling.
The truths Tom Paine reveals in the following essay concerning the
prophecies, if given a large enough popular audience, will cripple the
religious right and their money machine. His essay removes a fundamental
plank key to the continuation of the Christian myth. The editor.
EXAMINATION OF THE
PROPHECIES
by Thomas Paine
The passages called prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ, in the
Old Testament may be classed under the two following heads.
First, those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, called
the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, those which translators and commentators have, of their own
imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that title at the
head of the several chapters of the Old Testament. Of these it is
scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon; I shall,
therefore, confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid
four books of the New Testament. If I show that these are not prophecies
of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such
person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators
or the Church have invented, and for which they had no other authority
than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
In i. 18, it is said, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:
When His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together,
SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD OF THE HOLY GHOST."
This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree with
the next it should have said no more than that she was found with child;
for the next verse says, "Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and
not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away
privately." Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was
with child, and he knew it was not by himself.
Verses 20, 21. "And while he thought of these things, [that is whether
he should put her away privately, or make a public example of her],
behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM [that is, Joseph
dreamed that an angel appeared unto him] saying, Joseph, thou son of
David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son,
and call his name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins."
Now, without entering into any discussion upon the merits or demerits of
the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has no higher
authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible to a man to behold
anything in a dream but that which he dreams of. I ask not, therefore,
whether Joseph if there was such a man had such a dream or not, because
admitting he had, it proves nothing. So wonderful and irrational is the
faculty of the mind in dream, that it acts the part of all the
characters its imagination creates, and what it thinks it hears from any
of them is no other than what the roving rapidity of its own imagination
invents. It is therefore nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether
of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife. I pay no regard to my own
dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.
The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the writer
of the book of Matthew. "Now [says he] all this [that is, all this
dreaming and this pregnancy] was done that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be
with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us."
This passage is in Isaiah vii, 14, and the writer of the book of Matthew
endeavors to make his readers believe that this passage is a prophecy of
the person called Jesus Christ. It is no such thing, and I go to show it
is not. But it is first necessary that I explain the occasion of these
words being spoken by Isaiah. The reader will then easily perceive that
so far from their being a prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the
least reference to such a person, nor to anything that could happen in
the time that Christ is said to have lived, which was about seven
hundred years after the time of Isaiah. The case is this:
On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monarchies: one
called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem: the
other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was Samaria. The
kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, and the kingdom of Israel
that of Saul; and these two rival monarchies frequently carried on
fierce wars against each other.
At this time Ahaz was King of Judah, which was in the time of Isaiah,
Pekah was King of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to Rezin, King of
Syria, to make war against Ahaz, King of Judah; and these two kings
marched a confederated and powerful army against Jerusalem. Ahaz and his
people became alarmed at their danger, and "their hearts were moved as
the trees of the wood are moved with the wind." Isaiah vii, 3.
In this perilous situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz,
and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets), that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to
assure him that this should be the case (the case was however directly
contrary) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord.
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason, that he would not tempt
the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who pretends to be sent from God, says,
verse 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son - butter and honey shall he eat,
that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good - for before the
child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land which
thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" - meaning the King
of Israel and the King of Syria who were marching against him.
Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and that
child a son; and here also is the time limited for the accomplishment of
the sign, namely, before the child should know to refuse the evil and
choose the good.
The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must be something
that would take place before the event of the battle then pending
between him and the two kings could be known. A thing to be a sign must
precede the thing signified. The sign of rain must be before the rain.
It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to have
assured Ahaz a sign that these two things should not prevail against
him, that a child should be born seven hundred years after he was dead,
and that before the child so born should know to refuse the evil and
choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be delivered from the danger he was
then immediately threatened with.
But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his own
child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant; for he
says in the next chapter (Is. vii, 2), "And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah; and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bear
a son;" and he says, at verse 18 of the same chapter, "Behold I and the
children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in
Israel."
It may not be improper here to observe, that the word translated a
virgin in Isaiah, doe not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely a young
woman. The tense is also falsified in the translation. Levi gives the
Hebrew text of Isaiah vii, 14, and the translation in English with it -
"Behold a young woman is with child and beareth a son." The expression,
says he, is in the present tense.
This translation agrees with the other circumstances related of the
birth of this child which was to be a sign to Ahaz. But as the true
translation could not have been imposed upon the world as a prophecy of
a child to be born seven hundred years afterwards, the Christian
translators have falsified the original: and instead of making Isaiah to
say, behold a young woman IS with child and beareth a son, they have
made him to say, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son."
It is, however, only necessary for a person to read Isaiah vii, and
viii, and he will be convinced that the passage in question is no
prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. I pass on to the second
passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of Jesus
Christ.
Matthew ii, 1-6. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the
days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the East to
Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we
have seen his star in the East and are come to worship him. When Herod
the king heard these things he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him;
and when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said
unto him, In Bethlehem, in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by
the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least
among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a Governor that
shall rule my people Israel." This passage is in Micah v, 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day
time, as a man would a will-with-the-wisp, or a candle and lantern at
night; and also that of seeing it in the East, when themselves came from
the East; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a
guide, it must be in the West to them. I confine myself solely to the
passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, v, 2, is speaking of
some person, without mentioning his name, from whom some great
achievements were expected; but the description he gives of this person,
verse 5, 6, proves evidently that is not Jesus Christ, for he says, "and
this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land:
and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise up against
him [that is against the Assyrian] seven shepherds and eight principal men.
"And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land
of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall he [the person spoken of
at the head of the second verse] deliver us from the Assyrian, when he
cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders."
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot be
applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to give
us of him. Besides which, the circumstances of the times here spoken of,
and those of the times in which Christ is said to have lived, are in
contradiction to each other.
It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians that had conquered and were in
the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ was born, and
when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it was they who
signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ, I pass on to
the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a
prophecy of him. This, like the first I have spoken of, is introduced by
a dream. Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth that he seeth
another angel.
The account begins at Matthew ii, 13. "The angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother
and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: For
Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy him.
"When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and
departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
Out of Egypt have I called my son."
This passage is in the book of Hosea, xi, 1. The words are, "When Israel
was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt. As they
called them so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim and
burned incense to graven images."
This passage, falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the
children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharaoh, and to
the idolatry they committed afterwards. To make it apply to Jesus
Christ, he then must be the person who sacrificed unto Baalim and burned
incense to graven images; for the person called out of Egypt by the
collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idolatry, are
the same persons or the descendants of them.
This then can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are willing to
make an idolater of him. I pass on to the fourth passage called a
prophecy by the writer of the book of Matthew.
This is introduced by a story told by nobody but himself, and scarcely
believed by anybody, of the slaughter of all the children under two
years old, by the command of Herod. A thing which it is not probable
should be done by Herod, as he only held an office under the Roman
Government, to which appeals could always be had, as we see in the case
of Paul. Matthew, however, having made or told his story, says, ii, 17,
18, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,
saying - In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping and
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted because they were not."
This passage is in Jeremiah xxxi, 15; and this verse, when separated
from the verses before and after it, and which explain its application,
might with equal propriety be applied to every case of wars, sieges, and
other violences, such as the Christians themselves have often done to
the Jews, where mothers have lamented the loss of their children.
There is nothing in the verse, taken singly, that designates or points
out any particular application of it, otherwise than it points to some
circumstances which, at the time of writing it, had already happened,
and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the preter or past
tense. I go to explain the case and show the application of the verse.
Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, took,
plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem, and led the Jews captive to Babylon.
He carried his violence against the Jews to every extreme. He slew the
sons of King Zedekiah before his face, he then put out the eyes of
Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.
It is this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is
speaking. Their Temple was destroyed, their land desolated, their nation
and government entirely broken up, and themselves, men, women and
children, carried into captivity. They had too many sorrows of their
own, immediately before their eyes, to permit them, or any of their
chiefs, to be employing themselves on things that might, or might not,
happen in the world seven hundred years afterwards.
It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering to the
Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question. In the next two
verses (16, 17), he endeavors to console the sufferers by giving them
hopes, and, according to the fashion of speaking in those days,
assurances from the Lord, that their sufferings should have an end, and
that their children should return again to their own children. But I
leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Testament to
testify against the New.
Jeremiah xxxi, 15. "Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah [it
is in the preter tense], lamentation and bitter weeping: Rachel, weeping
for her children, refused to be comforted for her children because they
were not." Verse 16, "Thus saith the Lord: Refrain thy voice from
weeping and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith
the Lord; and THEY shall come again from the land of the enemy." Verse
17. - "And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children
shall come again to their own border."
By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children of
which Jeremiah speaks (meaning the people of the Jewish nation,
scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two
years old), and who were to return again from the land of the enemy, and
come again into their own borders, can mean the children that Matthew
makes Herod to slaughter? Could those return again from the land of the
enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to them? Could they
come again to their own borders?
Good heavens! How the world has been imposed upon by testament-makers,
priestcraft, and pretended prophecies. I pass on to the fifth passage
called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, like two of the former, is introduced by dream. Joseph dreamed
another dream, and dreameth of another angel. And Matthew is again the
historian of the dream and the dreamer. If it were asked how Matthew
could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the Bishop nor all the Church
could answer the question.
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed, and not Joseph; that is, Joseph
dreamed by proxy, in Matthew's brain, as they tell us Daniel dreamed for
Nebuchadnezzar. But be this as it may, I go on with my subject.
The account of this dream is in Matthew ii, 19-23. "But when Herod was
dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in
Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother and go
into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young
child's life. And he arose and took the young child and his mother, and
came into the land of Israel."
"But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his
father Herod, he was afraid to go tither. Notwithstanding being warned
of God in a dream [here is another dream] he turned aside into the parts
of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called
a Nazarene."
Here is good circumstantial evidence that Matthew dreamed, for there is
no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the Bishop, and
all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce
it. I pass on to the sixth passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and
shoulders; it need only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced and
farfetched piece of imposition.
Matthew, iv, 12-16, "Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into
prison, he departed into Galilee: and leaving Nazareth, he came and
dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of
Zebulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulon and the land of
Nephtalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them
which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is springing upon them."
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the
Christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a prophecy.
He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected and
undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed them
with that title. The words however, are in Isaiah ix, 1, 2 as follows:
"Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when
at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of
the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened at the
time these words in Isaiah were written. The one, where the land of
Zebulon and Naphtali had been lightly afflicted, and afterwards more
grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He begins his
quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as a comma,
and thereby cuts off everything that relates to the first affliction. He
then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction, and by this
means leaves out everything that makes the verse intelligible, and
reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately before the
eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between brackets []
the words he has left out, and put in italics those that he has preserved.
"[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation when
at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by the way of
the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations."
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this
manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a
credulous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Verse 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light;
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the
light shined." All this is historical, and not in the least prophetical.
The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had been
accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be
accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to
be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to falsify the
original but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of no concern
to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which
the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and what the light was that had
shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, Isaiah viii, of which ix is only
a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at verse nineteen of
"witches and wizards who peep about and mutter," and of people who made
application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this
darksome practice.
It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, or walking in
darkness, that he is speaking at ix, 2; and with respect to the light
that had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry,
and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches
and wizards who peeped about and muttered.
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild, disorderly writer, preserving in
general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas,
and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them.
It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the
ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities
to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose
those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ.
Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them,
and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning,
they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called
it his. I have however in this place done Isaiah the justice to rescue
him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces,
and from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by
letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in any
case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would better
apply to the times we now live in than to any other. The world has
"walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and
government, and it is only since the American Revolution began that
light has broken in.
The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book
or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counterfeit or
falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Matthew has
shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making
its way among us: and as to government, the light is already gone forth,
and while men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it,
as at a certain time in France when everything was Robespierrean
violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the
perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew viii, 16, 17. "When the evening was come, they brought unto him
[Jesus] many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the
spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying,
himself took our infirmities, and bare our sickness."
This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting them
out, was the fable of the day when the books of the New Testament were
written. It had not existence at any other time. The books of the Old
Testament mention no such thing; the people of the present day know of
no such thing; nor does the history of any people or country speak of
such a thing. It starts upon us all at once in the book of Matthew, and
is altogether an invention of the New Testament makers and the Christian
Church.
The book of Matthew is the first book where the word devil is mentioned.
We read in some of the books of the Old Testament of things called
familiar spirits, the supposed companion of people called witches and
wizards. It was no other than the trick of pretended conjurers to obtain
money from credulous and ignorant people, or the fabricated charge of
superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decrepit old age. But
the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the term, is
exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil.
In the one case, the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent, that
comes and goes and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a turbulent
roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions.
Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the
reason He endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.
The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in
Isaiah, liii, 4, which is as follows: "Surely he [the person of whom
Isaiah is speaking] hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." It
is in the preter tense.
Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sicknesses. The
passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, is not even
applicable as a circumstance.
Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs
the whole of this chapter, liii, in lamenting the sufferings of some
deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically. It is a monody on
the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor
gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and
it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid
hold of, to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews,
whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with
danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of
their own friends, but were continually running a wild-goose chase into
futurity.
To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The characters and
circumstances of men, even in the different ages of the world, are so
much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many;
but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but
an imposter, or a bigot, would call it so.
Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions
nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the
cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience
in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line
of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be
said of many.
But if Jesus Christ was the person the Church represents him to be, that
which would exclusively apply to him must be something that could not
apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature,
something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such
expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.
It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the
person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter, He was oppressed and he was
afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not
his mouth. This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered
oppressions and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect
resignation.
Grotius, whom the Bishop [of Llandaff] esteems a most learned man, and
who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is
speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion from the
agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah and the case
of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was hard; he was
accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned,
and he says of himself, (see Jer. xi. 19) "But as for me I was like a
lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter."
I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived
at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks;
but Isaiah died about fifty years before; and it is of a person of his
own time whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in question, and
which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards,
perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xii, 14-21: "Then the Pharisees went out and held a council
against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it he
withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him and he healed them all;
and he charged them they should not make him known; That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying,
Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is
well pleased; I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment
to the Gentiles. "He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man
hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and
smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto
victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust."
In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the
purpose for which it is quoted.
Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to destroy
him - that Jesus withdrew himself - that great numbers followed him -
that he healed them - and that he charged them they should not make him
known. But the passage Matthew has quoted as being fulfilled by these
circumstances does not so much as apply to any one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to destroy
Jesus - with his withdrawing himself - with great numbers following him
- with his healing them - nor with his charging them not to make him known.
The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage itself, are
as remote from each other, as nothing from something. But the case is,
that people have been so long in the habit of reading the books called
the Bible and Testament with their eyes shut, and their senses locked
up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth,
and imposition for prophecy.
The Allwise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of
fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.
In this passage, as in that last mentioned, the name of the person of
whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark
respecting him. It is this defect in the history that bigotry and
imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.
Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would descriptively
apply to him. As King of Persia, his authority was great among the
Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks; and his
friendship for the Jews, whom he liberated from captivity, and who might
then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive.
But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no
authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figuratively
described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him. Neither
can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice was not
heard in the street. As a preacher it was his business to be heard, and
we are told that he traveled about the country for that purpose.
Matthew has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is good, but
which is much to be doubted since he imposes so much) Jesus preached to
a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a
mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as public.
The last verse in the passage (the fourth) as it stands in Isaiah, and
which Matthew has not quoted, says, "He shall not fail nor be
discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall
wait for his law." This also applies to Cyrus. He was not discouraged,
he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and
established laws.
But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who in the passage before us,
according to Matthew, [xii, 15], withdrew himself for fear of the
Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make it known
where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was
continually moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended.
But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who the
person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of detecting
fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to show it was not the
person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxi. 1-5. "And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come
to Bethpage, unto the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two of his
disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and
straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them
and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought to you, ye shall say,
the Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send them. All this
was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,
saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold thy King cometh unto thee,
meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."
Poor ass! let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings, that if
the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the Christian
world has elevated thee into a prophecy.
This passage is in Zechariah ix, 9, and is one of the whims of friend
Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then returning from
captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusalem. It has no
concern with any other subject. It is strange that apostles, priests,
and commentators, never permit, or never suppose, the Jews to be
speaking of their own affairs.
Everything in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into meanings
never intended by the writers. Even the poor ass must not be a Jew-ass
but a Christian-ass. I wonder they did not make an apostle of him, or a
bishop, or at least make him speak and prophesy. He could have lifted up
his voice as loud as any of them.
Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several
whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem. He says at the eighth
verse, "I saw by night [Zechariah was a sharpsighted seer] and behold a
man setting on a red horse [yes reader, a red horse], and he stood among
the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were red
horses, speckled and white." He says nothing about green horses, nor
blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from
blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there,
because "faith is the evidence of things not seen."
Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not
tell us what color the angel was of, whether black or white, nor whether
he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for
certainly they were of that kind. Be this however as it may, he enters
into conversation with this angel on the joyful affair of getting back
to Jerusalem, and he saith at the sixteenth verse, "Therefore, thus
saith the Lord, I AM RETURNED to Jerusalem with mercies; my house shall
be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched
forth upon Jerusalem." An expression signifying the rebuilding the city.
All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that it
was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and not the
entry of Jesus Christ seven hundred years afterwards, that is the
subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.
As to the expression of riding upon an ass, which commentators represent
as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he never was so well
mounted before. The asses of those countries are large and well
proportioned, and were anciently the chief of riding animals. Their
beasts of burden, and which served also for the conveyance of the poor,
were camels and dromedaries. We read in Judges x, 4, that Jair [one of
the Judges of Israel] "had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts,
and they had thirty cities." But commentators distort everything.
There is besides very reasonable grounds to conclude that this story of
Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is said at
verses eight and nine, by a great multitude, shouting and rejoicing and
spreading their garments by the way, is a story altogether destitute of
truth.
In the last passage called a prophecy that I examined, Jesus is
represented as withdrawing, that is, running away, and concealing
himself for fear of being apprehended, and charging the people that were
with him not to make him known. No new circumstance had arisen in the
interim to change his condition for the better; yet here he is
represented as making his public entry into the same city from which he
had fled for safety. The two cases contradict each other so much, that
if both are not false, one of them at least can scarcely be true.
For my own part, I do not believe there is one word of historical truth
in the whole book. I look upon it at best to be a romance; the principal
personage of which is an imaginary or allegorical character founded upon
some tale, and in which the moral is in many parts good, and the
narrative part very badly and blunderingly written.
I pass on to the tenth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvi, 51-56: "And behold one of them which was with Jesus
[meaning Peter] stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a
servant of the high priest, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto
him, put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the
sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray
to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of
angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?
"In that same hour Jesus said to the multitudes, Are ye come out as
against a thief, with swords and with staves for to take me? I sat daily
with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this
was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."
This loose and general manner of speaking, admits neither of detection
nor of proof. Here is no quotation given, nor the name of any Bible
author mentioned, to which reference can be had.
There are, however, some high improbabilities against the truth of the
account.
First - It is not possible that the Jews, who were then a conquered
people, and under subjection to the Romans, should be permitted to wear
swords.
Secondly - If Peter had attacked the servant of the high priest and cut
off his ear, he would have been immediately taken up by the guard that
took up his master and sent to prison with him.
Thirdly - What sort of disciples and preaching apostles must those of
Christ have been that wore swords?
Fourthly - This scene is represented to have taken place the same
evening of what is called the Lord's supper, which makes, according to
the ceremony of it, the inconsistency of wearing swords the greater.
I pass on to the eleventh passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 3-10: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw
that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty
pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned
in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that
to us, see thou to that. And he cast down the thirty pieces of silver,
and departed, and went and hanged himself.
"And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, it is not lawful
to put them in the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they
took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers
in. Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day.
"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet,
saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that
was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them
for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me."
This is a most barefaced piece of imposition. The passage in Jeremiah
which speaks of the purchase of a field, has no more to do with the case
to which Matthew applies it, than it has to do with the purchase of
lands in America. I will recite the whole passage:
Jeremiah xxxii, 6-15: "And Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came unto
me, saying, Behold Hanameel, the son of Shallum thine uncle, shall come
unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth, for the right
of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanameel mine uncle's son came to
me in the court of the prison, according to the word of the Lord, and
said unto me, Buy my field I pray thee that is in Anathoth, which is in
the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is thine, and the
redemption is thine; buy it for thyself.
"Then I knew this was the word of the Lord. And I bought the field of
Hanameel mine uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the
money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence
and sealed it, and took witnesses and weighed him the money in the balances.
"So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed
according to the law and custom, and that which was open; and I gave the
evidence of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah, the son of
Maaseiah, in the sight of Hanameel mine uncle's son, and in the presence
of the witnesses that subscribed [the book of the purchase], before all
the Jews that sat in the court of the prison.
"And I charged Baruch before them, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel: Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase,
both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open, and put them in
an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. For thus saith the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall
be possessed again in this land."
I forebear making any remark on this abominable imposition of Matthew.
The thing glaringly speaks for itself. It is priests and commentators
that I rather ought to censure, for having preached falsehood so long,
and kept people in darkness with respect to those impositions.
I am not contending with these men upon points of doctrine, for I know
that sophistry has always a city of refuge. I am speaking of facts; for
wherever the thing called a fact is a falsehood, the faith founded upon
it is delusion, and the doctrine raised upon it not true. Ah, reader,
put thy trust in thy Creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou
trustest to the book called the Scriptures thou trustest to the rotten
staff of fable and falsehood. But I return to my subject.
There is among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention made of
thirty pieces of silver given to a potter. They can hardly have been so
stupid as to mistake a potter for a field: and if they had, the passage
in Zechariah has no more to do with Jesus, Judas, and the field to bury
strangers in, than that already quoted. I will recite the passage.
Zechariah xi, 7-14: "And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O
poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called
Beauty, the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. Three shepherds
also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul
also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you; that which dieth,
let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let
the rest eat everyone the flesh of another.
"And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might
break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was
broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock who waited upon me knew
that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them, If ye think
good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my
price thirty pieces of silver.
"And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter; a goodly price that
I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and
cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Then I cut asunder
mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between
Judah and Israel."
There is no making either head or tail of this incoherent gibberish. His
two staves, one called Beauty and the other Bands, is so much like a
fairy tale, that I doubt if it had any other origin. There is, however,
no part that has the least relation to the case stated in Matthew; on
the contrary, it is the reverse of it. Here the thirty pieces of silver,
whatever it was for, is called a goodly price, it was as much as the
thing was worth, and according to the language of the day, was approved
of by the Lord, and the money given to the potter in the house of the Lord.
In the case of Jesus and Judas, as stated in Matthew, the thirty pieces
of silver were the price of blood; the transaction was condemned by the
Lord, and the money when refunded was refused admittance into the
treasury. Everything in the two cases is the reverse of each other.
Besides this, a very different and direct contrary account to that of
Matthew, is given of the affair of Judas, in the book called the "Acts
of the Apostles"; according to that book the case is, that so far from
Judas repenting and returning the money, and the high priests buying a
field with it to bury strangers in, Judas kept the money and bought a
field with it for himself; and instead of hanging himself as Matthew
says, that he fell headlong and burst asunder. Some commentators
endeavor to get over one part of the contradiction by ridiculously
supposing that Judas hanged himself first and the rope broke.
Acts i, 16-18: "Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been
fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before
concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus [David says
not a word about Judas], for he [Judas] was numbered among us and
obtained part of our ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the
reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst
and his bowels gushed out."
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed
religion, when we see in it such
contradictions and absurdities? I pass on to the twelfth passage called
a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 35: "And they crucified him, and parted his garments,
casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did
they cast lots." This expression is in Psalm xxii, 18.
The writer of that Psalm (whoever he was, for the Psalms are a
collection and not the work of one man) is speaking of himself and his
own case, and not that of another. He begins this Psalm with the words
which the New Testament writers ascribed to Jesus Christ: "My God, my
God, why hast Thou forsaken me" - words which might be uttered by a
complaining man without any great impropriety, but very improperly from
the mouth of a reputed God.
The picture which the writer draws of his own situation in this Psalm,
is gloomy enough. He is not prophesying, but complaining of his own hard
case. He represents himself as surrounded by enemies and beset by
persecutions of every kind; and by the way of showing the inveteracy of
his persecutors he says, "They parted my garments among them, and cast
lots upon my vesture."
The expression is in the present tense; and is the same as to say, they
pursue me even to the clothes upon my back, and dispute how they shall
divide them. Besides, the word vesture does not always mean clothing of
any kind, but Property, or rather the admitting a man to, or investing
him with property; and as it is used in this Psalm distinct from the
word garment, it appears to be used in this sense. But Jesus had no
property; for they make him say of himself, "The foxes have holes and
the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to
lay his head."
But be this as it may, if we permit ourselves to suppose the Almighty
would condescend to tell, by what is called the spirit of prophecy, what
could come to pass in some future age of the world, it is an injury to
our own faculties, and to our ideas of His greatness, to imagine that it
would be about an old coat, or an old pair of breeches, or about
anything which the common accidents of life, or the quarrels which
attend it, exhibit every day.
That which is in the power of man to do, or in his will not to do, is
not subject for prophecy, even if there were such a thing, because it
cannot carry with it any evidence of divine power, or divine interposition.
The ways of God are not the ways of men. That which an Almighty power
performs, or wills, is not within the circle of human power to do, or to
control. But an executioner and his assistants might quarrel about
dividing the garments of a sufferer, or divide them without quarrelling,
and by that means fulfil the thing called a prophecy, or set it aside.
In the passages before examined, I have exposed the falsehood of them.
In this I exhibit its degrading meanness, as an insult to the Creator
and an injury to human reason.
Here end the passages called prophecies by Matthew.
Matthew concludes his book by saying, that when Christ expired on the
cross, the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the bodies of many of the
saints arose; and Mark says, there was darkness over the land from the
sixth hour until the ninth.
They produce no prophecy for this; but had these things been facts, they
would have been a proper subject for prophecy, because none but an
Almighty power could have inspired a foreknowledge of them, and
afterwards fulfilled them. Since then there is no such prophecy, but a
pretended prophecy of an old coat, the proper deduction is, there were
no such things, and that the book of Matthew was fable and falsehood.
I pass on to the book called the Gospel according to St. Mark.
THE BOOK OF MARK
There are but few passages in Mark called prophecies; and but few in
Luke and John. Such as there are I shall examine, and also such other
passages as interfere with those cited by Matthew.
Mark begins his book by a passage which he puts in the shape of a
prophecy. Mark i, 1,2. - "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God: As it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee."
(Malachi iii,1)
The passage in the original is in the first person. Mark makes this
passage to be a prophecy of John the Baptist, said by the Church to be a
forerunner of Jesus Christ. But if we attend to the verses that follow
this expression, as it stands in Malachi, and to the first and fifth
verses of the next chapter, we shall see that this application of it is
erroneous and false.
Malachi having said, at the first verse, "Behold I will send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me," says, at the second
verse, "But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand
when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap."
This description can have no reference to the birth of Jesus Christ, and
consequently none to John the Baptists. It is a scene of fear and terror
that is here described, and the birth of Christ is always spoken of as a
time of joy and glad tidings.
Malachi, continuing to speak on the same subject, explains in the next
chapter what the scene is of which he speaks in the verses above quoted,
and whom the person is whom he calls the messenger.
"Behold," says he, (iv, 1), "the day cometh that shall burn like an
oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be
stubble; and the day cometh that shall burn them up, saith the Lord of
hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Verse 5:
"Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the
great and dreadful day of the Lord." By what right, or by what
imposition or ignorance Mark has made Elijah into John the Baptist, and
Malachi's description of the day of judgment into the birthday of
Christ, I leave to the Bishop [of Llandaff] to settle.
Mark (i,2,3), confounds two passages together, taken from different
books of the Old Testament. The second verse, "Behold I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee," is
taken, as I have said before, from Malachi. The third verse, which says,
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the
Lord, make His paths straight," is not in Malachi, but in Isaiah, xl, 3.
Whiston says that both these verses were originally in Isaiah. If so, it
is another instance of the distorted state of the Bible, and
corroborates what I have said with respect to the name and description
of Cyrus being in the book of Isaiah, to which it cannot chronologically
belong.
The words in Isaiah - "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" - are in the
present tense, and consequently not predictive. It is one of those
rhetorical figures which the Old Testament authors frequently used. That
it is merely rhetorical and metaphorical, may be seen at the sixth
verse: "And the voice said, cry; and he said what shall I cry? All flesh
is grass."
This is evidently nothing but a figure; for flesh is not grass otherwise
than as a figure or metaphor, where one thing is put for another.
Besides which, the whole passage is too general and too declamatory to
be applied exclusively to any particular person or purpose.
I pass on to the eleventh chapter.
In this chapter, Mark speaks of Christ riding into Jerusalem upon a
colt, but he does not make it an
accomplishment of a prophecy, as Matthew has done, for he says nothing
about a prophecy. Instead of which he goes on the other tack, and in
order to add new honors to the ass, he makes it to be a miracle; for he
says, verse 2, it was a colt "whereon never man sat"; signifying
thereby, that as the ass had not been broken, he consequently was
inspired into good manners, for we do not hear that he kicked Jesus
Christ off. There is not a word about his kicking in all the four
Evangelists.
I pass on from these feats of horsemanship performed upon a jack-ass, to
the 15th chapter. At the 24th verse of this chapter, Mark speaks of
parting Christ's garments and casting lots upon them, but he applies no
prophecy to it as Matthew does. He rather speaks of it as a thing then
in practice with executioners, as it is at this day.
At the 28th verse of the same chapter, Mark speaks of Christ being
crucified between two thieves; that, says he, the Scripture might be
fulfilled, "which saith, and he was numbered with the transgressors."
The same might be said of the thieves.
This expression is in Isaiah liii, 12. Grotius applies it to Jeremiah.
But the case has happened so often in the world, where innocent men have
been numbered with transgressors, and is still continually happening,
that it is absurdity to call it a prophecy of any particular person. All
those whom the church calls martyrs were numbered with transgressors.
All the honest patriots who fell upon the scaffold in France, in the
time of Robespierre, were numbered with transgressors; and if himself
had not fallen, the same case according to a note in his own
handwriting, had befallen me; yet I suppose the Bishop [of Llandaff]
will not allow that Isaiah was prophesying of Thomas Paine.
These are all the passages in Mark which have any reference to
prophecies. Mark concludes his book by making Jesus to say to his
disciples (xvi, 16-18), "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but
he that believeth not, shall be damned [fine popish stuff this], and
these signs shall follow them that believe: in my name they shall cast
out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them;
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
Now, the Bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and
wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself. He should
take a good dose of arsenic, and if he please, I will send him a
rattlesnake from America.
As for myself, as I believe in God and not at all in Jesus Christ, nor
in the books called the Scriptures, the experiment does not concern me.
I pass on to the book of Luke.
A second part is available on World Wide Web here:
http://deism.com/paine_essay_false_prophecies_of_jesus_2.htm